Ed Bronsky was leaving a strange trail behind him on Alpine's grapevine. The Alpine Advocate's former ad manager was creating a stir with his unusual behavior. He'd been spotted at the Grocery Basket stuffing bananas in his raincoat pocket, at Cal Vickers's Texaco station putting only three gallons of gas into his Mercedes, and leaving the Burger Barn without paying for his double deluxe bacon cheeseburger with extra fries. Indeed, I had noticed him in church at St. Mildred's dropping coins into the collection basket instead of waving a check with his usual flourish.

My House & Home editor, Vida Runkel, was sorely tempted to put some of those occurrences into her weekly gossip column, "Scene Around Town," but even she felt there might be something seriously wrong with Ed. Many years earlier, he'd quit his job at the Advocate after inheriting a pile of money from an aunt. Ever since then he and his wife, Shirley, and their five children had lived the high life--or as high as you can get in Alpine, with its four thousand residents living in semi-isolation eight miles from the Stevens Pass summit.

I was about to discover the answer.

Ed had wedged himself into one of my two visitors' chairs on this first Monday morning in January. He looked more pugnacious than crazy.

"I want my old job back," he said without any preamble.

I was aghast. "What?"

Ed nodded once, his three chins settling into his Burberry muffler. "That's right. I'm--we're--broke."

Given the rumor mill, I wasn't completely bowled over. But I was still flabbergasted. "What happened?" I asked, pretending I hadn't heard his request to be reinstated. "I thought you had a financial adviser."

Ed cleared his throat. "I do. But . . ." He averted his eyes. "The dot-com disaster, 9/11, the whole downturn thing . . . plus, I made a few investments on the side. They didn't turn out so good."

I had to ask. "What kind of investments?"

Ed shot me a swift, furtive glance. "Prune-based fuel. Plastic tires. Paper shoes."

I didn't know what to say. "Those sound like kind of far-fetched ideas, Ed."

He pounded his pudgy fist on the table. "No! Think about it! We're ruining the planet by relying on traditional natural resources. We've got to find other solutions. We have to seek unusual means to maintain our quality of life. Was Ben Franklin flying a kite far-fetched? You bet. But look what happened."

I sensed that this spiel wasn't Ed's but had come from whoever had conned him into his bad investments.

He sighed and swiped at the comb-over that hid part of his bald dome. "There goes Stanford. Shirley and I really wanted to send at least one of our kids there."

It would have been unkind to point out that even if the Bronskys could have sent one of their five children to Stanford, that didn't mean that child would get in. I figured Ed would have had to endow most of the Bay Area to get his offspring accepted at the academically challenging Palo Alto school.

But I had to say something. "I'm so sorry, Ed."

He shrugged, the powdered sugar on his cashmere overcoat sprinkling the air of my cubbyhole office like tiny snowflakes. "You got any more of those doughnuts?" he asked.

"I think you ate the last three," I said.

"Oh." Ed frowned. "Maybe it's just as well I never got that bond issue on the ballot last fall," he mused. "Even if it'd passed, I'd probably still have had to invest some of my own money for the Mr. Pig Museum and Family Fun Center."

Ed was referring to his harebrained scheme for an amusement park that would feature the Mr. Pig characters from a Japanese animated TV show that had been loosely...

 

"If you like the Cat Who mysteries by Lilian Jackson Braun, you'll find similar fun here."

 

"Mary Daheim writes with wit, wisdom, and a big heart. I love her books."

 

"Recommended . . . If you like cozy mysteries, you need to try Daheim's Alpine series."

 

"Daheim writes . . . with dry wit, a butter-smooth style, and obvious wicked enjoyment."

 

"The characters are great, and the plots always attention-getting."

 

"Witty one-liners and amusing characterizations."

 

Mary Daheim is a Seattle native who started spinning stories before she could spell. Daheim has been a journalist, an editor, a public relations consultant, and a freelance writer, but fiction was always her medium of choice. In 1982 she launched a career that is now distinguished by more than forty novels. In 2000, she won the Literary Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. Daheim lives in Seattle with her husband, David, a retired professor of cinema, English, and literature. The Daheims have three daughters: Barbara, Katherine, and Magdalen.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Alpine Scandal by Mary Daheim
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